Oh my lovelies

What a funny old week, both in the cube farm and in life beyond work. As ever, so much, so much I could talk about, but just here and now, today I am amused by:
- Decoding and attempting to condense a 138 page document heavy with opaque Vinglish (ie translated from Vietnamese into English by a native Vietnamese speaker) which is baffling me, and a series of subheadings which is surely the work of a document lucifer – creating a picky-order-Queen’s version of hell (do you think knitters arrive to find giant tagly wool baskets that take eternity to unpick, and I will be presented with a squillion page document with no sense in the hierarchy of headings, stats that are baffling and such clumsy word selection as to keep me guessing – is this nuance or accident??). Ah, project work, don’t you love it?
- Trying to carve out space (a recurring theme for me in the last few years and raising it’s delicate space needing head again these last few weeks) to tackle said hellish document, but not wanting to head into one of the dingy meeting rooms, so write a post it and stuck to the back of my chair which says: ‘Friday pm – please do not disturb (unless urgent)’. It prompted my podmates to interrupt me on principal as a joke, and everyone else has walked up and half way through their request said ‘oh, sorry, I didn’t see that’- by which stage it is too late anyway, as I am by then well and truly interrupted. Aaaah, don’t you love working with other people.
- I have booked leave mid-year to attend a full week art course – 5 days of relief printmaking and etching. I am almost salivating at the thought of it. I really really can think of very few things more exhilarating than the prospect of uninterrupted art play for full days at a time.
- Having the cleaners in! Actual, not metaphorical cleaners, recommended by a girl at work, and trialed by the housemates and I this week. We were so excited about the cleanliness, we played ‘hunt the cleaned thing’ (goes like this: ‘ooh, ooh, the mantle piece! They dusted the mantle piece!’ ‘Hey, the kitchen shelf, they actually moved everything and cleaned this shelf!!’). We are very happy with the results. Boy housemate said ‘That Marjory – she is welcome anytime! She’s getting her own key!’ which summed up the feelings we all had really.
- Bought some winter wear, because I found a relatively empty shop with friendly staff (a combo I am a sucker for) and asked for frank advice about fit and clean lies (imagine me with knee length skirt, padding out in sock feet – stripy socks and being instructed to lift top to see waistband better etc. Wearing new skirt today. Girl Housemate has inspired me with her talk of ‘wardrobe basics’ and the need to get simple quality pieces. I don’t know that these meet her standards of quality, but they are least appropriate for the season, and fit, which is a step up from usual. I clothes shop a little bit like I am doing it underwater, as in I take a deep breath, and when I run out and start to feel like I am suffocating I have to leave, surface for fresh air. That is a long winded way of saying I do it with urgency with an end point in mind, and the goal of making it all finish (usually).